Category Archives: World News

Three New Academic Chairs for Indic Religions at the University of California

BUENA PARK, Calif. — A historical celebration of the establishment of three endowed chairs– Shri Parshvanath Presidential Chair in Jain Studies, Dhan Kaur Sahota Presidential Chair in Sikh Studies and Swami Vivekananda-DCF (Dharma Civilization Foundation) Presidential Chair in Modern India Studies – in the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine was held[…]

Colloquium at the Vatican

Dr Harhad N Sanghrajka, Deputy Chair of IoJ has been invited by the Vatican to represent Jains worldwide and Jain philosophical view on the topic: COMPLEMENTARITY OF MAN & WOMAN IN MARRIAGE The full programmes for the Colloquium can be viewed by clicking HERE. His Holiness the Pope performed the opening of the colloquium  The[…]

Lost Jain text on Indian philosophy reconstructed

AHMEDABAD: Analyses contained in Dwadasharnayachakra – a fifth century AD Jain treatise on comparative Indian philosophy – are key points of reference for scholars from across the globe who come to Gujarat to study Indian religious thought, particularly that of Jainism. Few are aware though that this treasure was reported lost some 1,300 years ago.[…]

Unsung Saga of a Man

25th August 2014 was the 150th birth anniversary of Virchand Raghavji Gandhi and it was celebrated at many cities in Gujarat and the US. Virchand Raghavji Gadhi was the first Jain to travel to the US where he attended the 1893 World Parliament of Religions and put to rest many misunderstandings false impressions of Jain[…]

Samani Charitra Prajna visited Center for Jaina Studies of Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

Samani Charitra Prajna, Vice Chancellor of JVBU Ladnun, and Samani Aagam Prajna visited Berlin Center for Jaina Studies (CfJS) after their participation at a conference on interreligious dialogue, which occurred on May 7th, 2014  at St. Ottilien near Munich. At the University of Applied Sciences,  a seminar on Jainism was  held this semester by Patrick[…]

Celebrating 50 years of Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue at the Vatican

It was 19th May 1964 when Pope Paul VI instituted the “Secretariat for Non-Christians”, the forerunner of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) at The Holy See.  Monday, 19th May 2014 was the Golden Anniversary celebration and the auditorium was filled by over 250 representatives from the Catholic Church as well as many other[…]

Journey of Love and Joy

to commemorate The Birth of Bhagwan Mahavir. A Jain family in Kaula Lampur, Malaysia has been celebrating the Mahavir Janma Kalyanak for the past 17 years in increasing splendour each year and this year will be no different. It will be celebrated with great pomp and pageantry on Saturday, 12th April 2014 with a rath yatra. The family[…]

Progress on Animal Welfare

The combined efforts made by organisations interested in animal welfare and compassion, those wanting to protect our environment and to a smaller extent the Jain organisations  are slowly but surely getting recognition and their efforts are beginning to bear fruits. The first noticeable effect is that the case for vegetarianism has now endorsed quite successfully[…]

Jain Document Declared a Global Treasure by UNESCO

Shantinatha Charitra – a text written in Sanskrit, that describes the life and times of Shantinatha, the 16th Jain Tirthankara has been included in the most prestigious list of the world’s greatest documents. Unesco’s world heritage body in June 2013 included the Indian entry in the Memory of the World Register 2013 and said “the story is of lasting[…]